A Look At Fighter Longevity

Bloody Elbow has posted an article written by one of the community members over there, Patrick Wyman. He looks at various factors that can lead to the decline of a fighters career & analyses data to show those aspects. I thought it's one of the best articles I've read in a long time so here it is.

I'll post the first few paragraphs, to get the full article click on the link below. It's a decent sized article so if you've got a short attention span then you're probably better giving it a miss.

Fighters decline as they age. This should be an uncontroversial statement, and it's been repeatedly backed up by in-depth analysis, as this piecefrom the incomparable Fightnomics firmly demonstrates. This statement, however obvious, leaves out the truly intriguing questions. At what point in their careers do fighters tend to decline? What are the factors that correlate to exceptional longevity or, alternatively, a rapid falloff from one's peak? Finally, what are the causal factors that contribute to this decline?

Several years ago, it was argued that fighters tend to decline markedly after the ninth year of their careers, measured from the date at which they started fighting. The piece wasn't perfect, and criticisms flew fast and furious; some were valid - flawed data sets and methodologies, for example - while others were not. More than anything, using winning percentage as the sole metric by which to measure peak and decline is exceptionally problematic. What about being on the wrong end of a bad decision - Sanchez-Kampmann comes to mind - or fighting up to one's talent level but being beaten by a fighter who's clearly better, a la Condit-GSP?

I'm unsatisfied with the current state of the issue. MMA and the large-scale analysis thereof is still in its infancy, especially compared to baseball, where these questions have been investigated in exceptional depth over the last several years. This piece is not intended to provide definitive answers to the question of career decline, but I hope to restart the conversation and provide a starting point for more in-depth investigations.

With that in mind, I've assembled a large database. Using FightMatrix's ranking system, I took the top 20 fighters in every division and examined the following variables:1) length of career to date, rounded to the nearest quarter year2) the age at which they had their first professional fight3) their base style (BJJ, wrestling, Muay Thai, etc.), and the level of accomplishment in that base style4) significant strikes absorbed per minute, as a way of getting a general idea of how much damage they've absorbed over the course of their career5) total number of fights and fights per year6) knockout losses

Problem with significant strikes absorbed per minute is that it is a subjective stat to begin with. Then it is tough to figure out when there isn't video out there of all fights, especially those in random promotions that fold quickly. Plus, you don't know how many significant strikes a fighter has absorbed in training. It matters for sure, just hard to calculate.

Another article has been posted on Bloody Elbow by Partick Wyman regarding fighter longevity. Again I think it's well worth the read & I'll post the first couple paragraphs, but as it's a lengthy article click on the link to read it all.

After taking an initial look at questions of longevity inmy last piece, it seems appropriate to dig deeper into the rich data to answer additional questions for which space and time didn't allow. Although I'd suggest that you read the first installment (shameless plug), let's recap some key points of what we learned:1) On average, fighters tend to begin their decline around 9.5 years after the date of their first fight. In a sample of 48 fighters, nine was the most frequently occurring time, followed by ten and eight. In cases where fighters declined before the nine-year mark, they were extreme outliers in terms of taking damage (Frank Mir) or number of fights (Miguel Torres); alternatively, they might have had a long career in other combat sports (Mirko Filipovic) or unusually severe injuries (Norifumi Yamamoto, Brock Lesnar).2) The oft-cited "Nine-Year Rule", the previous standard for longevity research in MMA, greatly understates the potential for a fighter's prime to continue beyond that point. A significant reason for this was the piece's focus on winning percentage as the sole marker of decline, and to correct that flaw, we employed a diverse set of criteria for evaluating decline. These criteria included damage sustained, stylistic stagnation, and the use of betting odds as a way of approximating public perception of one's talent at a given point, in addition to winning percentage.3) Fighters with a base in grappling or wrestling tend to have greater potential for longevity than those with a striking base,Anderson Silvaexcepted. While this might sound obvious, it bears repeating: human beings have a finite capacity for absorbing brain trauma, and the less you experience before the beginning of your MMA career, the better off you are in the long term. As a corollary, damage sustained (as measured indirectly by strikes absorbed/minute) tends to be a good predictor of longevity.